


fill in the holes you've made

by foreignconstellations



Series: learn my lesson, lead me home [1]
Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 04:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignconstellations/pseuds/foreignconstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eugene hopes that Snafu regrets it, leaving him like that, without a word. Leaving him at all, even. Hopes that Snafu feels even a hint of what Eugene feels - like he can’t function right on his own anymore, he’s spent so long with Snafu always within reaching distance. Would he sleep better, he wonders, if he knew he would see Snafu’s face when he woke? Who can tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fill in the holes you've made

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zeugmatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeugmatic/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [fill in the holes you've made](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5951868) by [DrWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrWinter/pseuds/DrWinter)



> for sam, who is the reason i am in this fandom and the reason this actually got finished
> 
> fic title from 'thistle and weeds' by mumford & sons. series title from 'whispers in the dark', also by mumford & sons

At some point on Peleliu, Eugene gets it into his head that he’s never making it back home. It had always been a vague thought, that he could get shot or blown up, but Peleliu cements a certainty into his soul he’s never leaving the Pacific. And once that feeling, that knowledge, is there, he can’t shake it. It follows him, from Peleliu, back to Pavuvu, to Okinawa, through the end of war, to China, to the train as it thunders across America, all the way back to Alabama. Sitting in his room, in his house in Mobile, that feeling is still there. He’s back in the house he grew up in, but he’s not  _home_  and he’s not  _whole_ , like he thought he would be, when he thought he’d get home at all. He left pieces of himself scattered across the Pacific - mostly in Peleliu and Okinawa (there’s an especially big piece of him in a destroyed house there, ripped out by a dead woman’s clutching fingers).

He lost the final piece of himself, the tiny part of who he used to be that he kept deep inside, when Snafu left him on that train without a word of farewell.

Eugene is able to go through motions in Mobile, interactions with Sid and his parents stirring feeling from his jagged edges. But he’s empty, hollowed out. He can hear the wind whistle through him.

He thinks about Snafu a lot. About what was going through his mind when he left Eugene asleep on that train. Did he hesitate at all? Or did he get off the train without a backward glance?

Eugene hopes that Snafu regrets it, leaving him like that, without a word. Leaving him at all, even. Hopes that Snafu feels even a hint of what Eugene feels - like he can’t function right on his own anymore, he’s spent so long with Snafu always within reaching distance. Would he sleep better, he wonders, if he knew he would see Snafu’s face when he woke? Who can tell.

Sometimes, he wonders whether Snafu left a piece of himself behind with him, but he doubts it. Eugene could never get a grip on Snafu long enough to rip a piece away - and if he did, he imagines it would probably dissipate in his hands, like smoke.

He misses being called Sledgehammer; it’s someone he can still definitively remember how to be.

He misses the way the name would sound in Snafu’s mouth.

* * *

He thinks about Snafu a lot. Thinks about sitting side by side in a hole in the mud, about their fingers brushing as Snafu hands him a cigarette, about watching Snafu watch him back with wide, hollow eyes.

Thinks about clocking him in the jaw, about screaming at him, _fuck you Shelton_ , _why did you leave me_? He can’t imagine what Snafu would say.

Thinks about kissing him, sometimes, and that doesn’t bother Eugene as much as he knows it should.  Maybe it’s because, after what he’s seen, what he’s done,  what he was prepared to do, it just feels insignificant in comparison. Or maybe there’s not enough of him left to care.

* * *

He grows hard; builds up walls to protect the raw emptiness inside of him. Shuts out the sadness, and the pity, and the ignorance, the god damned ignorance that’s everywhere he turns. It makes him miss Snafu all the more, because Snafu had never, ever been ignorant, had rather known far too much, like Eugene himself does now. Eugene doesn’t know what to do with all that knowledge, other than kill Japs, and apparently they don’t need him to do that anymore.

He knows his parents are trying to reach him, and so is his brother, and Sid, but he doesn’t let them. Can’t let them see how empty he is – he knows they would press, and if they press he might break and confess as to what happened to steal that final part of himself away. He hasn’t told anyone of what happened on the train, about waking up and realising he was alone, how it felt like the world had fallen out from under him. They wouldn’t understand.

* * *

( _He dreams of digging a foxhole in the mud in Okinawa, of a stench rising up from the earth, and there’s a body in his foxhole and the body is Snafu’s, eyes wide open and blank, and Eugene tries to pull him out but the mud is like quicksand and it’s sucking him down, and Eugene grips tight to Snafu’s dead fingers because he’ll either pull Snafu out or sink with him, and-_ )

\- and Eugene wakes up, and decides that he’s had enough.

By the end of the day, he has the address of the VA office in New Orleans, and a ticket for the earliest possible train the next morning. He retires to his room immediately after dinner, feeling the stares of his mother and father at his back and not caring.

He leaves for the train station so early his family is still asleep. He leaves a note telling them where he’s going; it’s easier than telling them face-to-face, having to see the lack of understanding in their faces as they ask questions he can’t answer, and he just doesn’t have the _time_.

It’s a vastly different journey than the one he took into Mobile. Everything looks soft in the grey light of early morning, and the few passengers are quiet in sleep. Eugene doesn’t join them. The last time he slept on a train, he woke up completely empty. _Once bitten, twice shy_ , and all that. He can’t think of anything that would bite him now, there’s nothing left of him for teeth to sink into, but his time in the Pacific taught him it could _always_ be worse, even if he doesn’t yet know how. He watches the countryside slip past outside the window, and runs his fingers over the scrap of paper bearing the address of the VA office.  


* * *

In far less time than he expected, Eugene is standing outside the door to Snafu’s apartment, knocking on the door. He can hear footsteps on the other side, faint muttering, and it feels like he’s dreaming. Like the door will open, and he’ll wake up in Mobile, still hollow.

The door swings open, and Snafu’s there, and Eugene hasn’t woken up yet, so this must be real. He feels his heart thump in his chest, feels it reverberate in the empty space in him. There’s no air in his lungs.

Snafu hasn’t moved from the doorway, hasn’t said a word, is just staring at him with wide eyes. Eugene is reaching out before he can stop himself; to hit, to caress, he doesn’t know, but Snafu’s finally within reaching distance, and he just needs to _touch_.

Snafu jerks back before he can, though, leaving Eugene’s hand suspended in the air between them. “Don’t, Sledgehammer.”

Eugene takes a great, shuddering breath. “Why?” he asks, and it’s a thousand different questions at once.

Snafu just shakes his head. “I’m not good for you.” Eugene knows what he means ( _bad germs_ ), and he hates it.

“You don’t think I can decide that for myself?” he grinds out.

“I can’t make you better,” Snafu tells him, and part of Eugene agrees with that and part of him doesn’t, so he doesn’t say anything. He takes a step forward, reaching for Snafu again, who doesn’t pull away this time, letting Eugene grip his shoulder tight, like he’s trying to stem blood from a wound.

“Please,” he says. “Let me in.”

And Snafu does.  


* * *

“You look tired, Sledgehammer,” Snafu says over his shoulder as they move into the apartment.

Eugene sighs. He knows what he looks like – pale and grey, with bags under his eyes that only get bigger the more he tries to sleep. “I haven’t been sleeping much. Nightmares.”

Snafu stiffens slightly. “You never had them over there.”

“Yeah, well, you were around then,” Eugene says, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice and failing. And Snafu’s wrong, he had had nightmares in the Pacific, he doesn’t know how you couldn’t. But they were quiet, eerie things – it’s only since he’s been home that he’s been tossing and turning and whimpering in his sleep.

Snafu turns to face him with a hint of fear in his face. “Gene…”

“What the fuck, Shelton?” Eugene hisses. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“Never knew you were such a girl, Sledge.” Snafu’s grin is shaky and Eugene doesn’t let himself be swayed by it.

“Don’t,” he growls. “You owe me an explanation.”

“I don’t _owe_ you shit,” Snafu retorts.

“Jesus, Snafu, don’t you get it?” Eugene takes an angry step forward, and feels a flare of warm satisfaction when Snafu takes a step back. “The whole time I was over there, you were the only thing I could always count on, and then I woke up and you’d just _gone_.”

“Never asked to be responsible for you,” Snafu says quietly.

Eugene huffs a cynical laugh. “None of us asked for anything that happened over there.”

 “I can’t make you better,” Snafu says again, shaking his head.

“I don’t trust you to anymore,” Eugene snaps, and it’s worth it for the look on Snafu’s face.

“Then why are you even here?” he asks haltingly, like the words are slipping out of his mouth. Eugene pauses, trying to figure out which of his reasons to give, and in the end decides on both.

“Because I’ve got nowhere else to go. And because I think if I learn to trust you again, you _can_ make me better.” There was never a question of whether or not Snafu would try, no matter the circumstances. Eugene is not stupid.

Snafu stares at him, gaze piercing, like he’s not sure if Eugene means it. Eugene stares right back, unblinkingly (until something in him flutters, because he’s _missed_ this, just being able to _look_ at Snafu, and it shocks him because five minutes ago he could’ve sworn there was nothing left in him). He lets out a shaky breath.

“You’re sleeping on the couch,” Snafu finally says, and Eugene smiles a shadow smile.

“It’s fine,” he says, and it may just be getting that way.  


* * *

It’s about two in the morning when Eugene is woken up by falling off the couch.

The abruptness of it, combined with the moments he’d been reliving in his sleep, knocks the breath out of his lungs, and he lies on the floor for a few moments, panting, trying to clear images of mud and blood and maggots from his eyes, before pushing himself up to a sitting position.

He can’t say he’s surprised about ending up on the floor. He knows how he tosses and turns in his sleep, and the couch is not really big enough to sleep on to begin with – he’d had a couple of close calls earlier on in the night, when he’d just been trying to get comfortable, simultaneously dreading and wishing for sleep. He’s just disentangling himself from the blankets when there’s a creak from behind him that makes him whirl around.

Snafu’s standing in his bedroom doorway, eyes glinting in the moonlight that’s streaming through the window. “Couch not good enough for you, Sledgehammer?” he asks softly.

“The couch is fine,” Eugene tells him, and then, “Did I wake you?”

There’s an apology ready on his lips, bred more of politeness than any real regret, but Snafu says, “No, I was already awake” and Eugene feels a twist of sympathy as he realises he’s probably not the only one with trouble sleeping nowadays. Something shifts in Snafu’s face that Eugene can’t quite make out in the dark. “Go back to sleep, Gene,” he says, and his voice is soft in a way Eugene has never heard before. It makes something inside him flutter again, and he almost gasps at the unfamiliarity of it.

“You gonna stand there and watch me?” he asks as he picks himself off the floor. Snafu says nothing and doesn’t budge from his spot in the doorway, so Eugene assumes that’s a ‘yes’. He’s not sure how he feels about it, so he just ignores Snafu altogether, curling up on the couch and shutting his eyes.

When he wakes up again a few hours later, Snafu is still there.

* * *

Days turn into weeks.

Eugene writes a letter to his parents, telling him he’s fine but he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He doesn’t include a return address.

Most days he’s on his own while Snafu’s out working. Eugene spends the time wandering around New Orleans, reading in the apartment, sitting outside someplace quiet and sketching birds. He cooks for them both, because Snafu would rather waste away than put a modicum of effort in in the kitchen, and he keeps the apartment clean. Snafu jokes about him becoming a proper little housewife. Eugene calls it earning his keep.

He feels more and more until he’s no longer surprised when it happens, when it seems like every day he spends in New Orleans another piece of himself slots back into place. He can’t help but picture Snafu shadowing him on Peleliu and Okinawa, picking up the pieces Eugene had lost there and keeping them safe until Eugene could take them back.

Every night now, Snafu is awake and watching him when he goes to sleep, and is always there when Eugene inevitably jerks awake in the middle of the night (less often now, but still at least once a night). He returns the favour most nights, watches as Snafu sinks into a sleep that’s often as disturbed as his own. He’s taken to sleeping on the floor in Snafu’s bedroom – it’s more convenient for everyone that way. It reminds him of sharing foxholes in the Pacific, and that thought is more comforting than it probably should be.

Eugene is better than he’s been in years, but he’s not quite whole yet. There’s still a piece missing, a tiny part deep inside.

* * *

It’s a warm Tuesday evening when Eugene takes Snafu’s face in his hands and kisses him full on the mouth. He’s imagined this more times than he can count, but everything he’d imagined can’t compare to what it really feels like to feel Snafu’s lips against his. Snafu is frozen against him and Eugene draws back quickly, watching him warily. He knows it’s possible Snafu will bolt, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier to contemplate.

After a moment, though, Snafu grins. “Thought you were never going to do that,” he says.

Eugene huffs a laugh, and kisses him again, and this time Snafu kisses him back. Something in Eugene finally slots fully into place, and he feels warm, and content, and finally, _finally_ home.

(And the next morning, Eugene will wake up in Snafu’s bed, with Snafu’s arm stretched across his stomach and the morning sun beaming down on them, having slept the whole night through.)


End file.
